Chapter 18: Power Outage
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He hadn't been lying. It was already freezing inside the house, and it had only been an hour since the power had gone out. Rachel shivered all while preparing their tea with the boiled water, knowing it was best to warm from the inside out. It wasn't exactly how she had imagined their first night alone would be - lying completely clothed in multiple layers under five blankets with a fire going by the bed.
They lay together like that for hours, just talking about life, recounting memories, sharing secrets with each other. After the initial letdown when she realized they weren't going to have sex, Rachel couldn't have been more thrilled with how the night had turned out. Dare she say, just talking to Frank was even more romantic than fucking him. Rachel wasn't used to a relationship where talking was a priority. She was too busy to form deep connections with anyone, and too bored to try for very long. But being apart from Frank all these years was like the longest kind of foreplay. It left her wanting and wondering, and now that she finally had him alone, in her arms for several uninterrupted days, she was overjoyed.
Their conversation was mostly lighthearted, but as the crackling fire began to die down, their topics became a bit more intense. Frank shared with her about his chaotic experience during September 11th the year prior, and Rachel shared more about her rough childhood. No one else listened to her as intently as Frank did. His eye contact was downright distressing sometimes. He never looked away from her when she spoke about serious matters. She had never felt so seen by anyone before. The only other person in the entire world who looked at her with such intensity was Fletcher.
But with Frank she felt like he wasn't just staring at her, he was staring into her. It wasn't because of his intelligence, and it had nothing to do with his detail-oriented nature. She had the feeling it ran deeper than that, but she didn't know just how deep.
After some time, the fire was dangerously low, and he gallantly extricated himself from the many layers of blankets they shared so that he could rekindle it.
Rachel watched from the bed, entranced by the way he worked. Every action was executed with such care and attention. She liked to think that she had a lot of street smarts thanks to her messy past, but Frank had built up his skills over time, pursuing each to perfection. She would have only known about his talent for self-defense if she'd not gotten to know him better. She discovered his basic survival skills being out here in the woods - the love he had for hunting and fishing and living off the land. She had no doubt he could be dropped from a helicopter anywhere in the world and use his own resourcefulness to find his way back home.
He looked back at her as he heard her giggling to herself. "What?"
"You ever seen that show, Survivor?" she asked him.
He carefully closed the mesh curtain across the now roaring fireplace. "I've seen commercials for it. I get the concept."
"You should go on it. I hear they give a million dollars to the person who wins," she said enticingly.
He smirked. "I don't think so."
"I know you'd win, Frank. If you watched it, you'd know I was right. You should see the clowns they put on this show." He just chuckled at her as he made his way back to the bed. "I mean, look at you," Rachel continued, "You fight bad guys, you shoot buck, you build fires with your bare hands." She teasingly wiggled her fingers at him and shyly settled her head back onto the pillow as he rested beside her.
"It's sorta funny how you used to call me a lunatic, and now you're praising me as if I were some hero in a storybook."
Rachel smirked. "Well, you're still a lunatic."
She could feel the reverb of his laughter in her chest because he was so close to her. It wasn't her imagination that he was closer to her now than before he left the bed.
"I guess in my line of work you do have to be a little insane," he admitted.
"It's insane," she confirmed, her eyes twinkling, "but it's also sexy."
He stared at her, looking both flattered and perplexed.
"I can't be the only woman who's told you that," she teased.
He took her hand in his and traced her fingers thoughtfully as he spoke. "Women seem to have this romantic notion of what a bodyguard should be, until they're in a relationship with one," he said bitterly. "Then they get jealous and resentful of all the time and effort you put into protecting your principal."
"I guess I never thought of it like that."
"You were my principal," he emphasized, his blue eyes alight with humor as he held her hand tighter. "And you're still the most difficult one I ever had."
She tugged her hand out of his grip to playfully shove his chest. He laughed again, the sound so strong and familiar. She couldn't get enough of it.
Rachel studied his eyes for a moment before asking, "What would you be doing if you hadn't become a bodyguard?"
"Local law enforcement." He said it immediately, as if he'd thought of it often before.
"Sheriff Farmer," she cooed with a playful tug of his sleeve.
His eyes shimmered with mirth.
"Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I hadn't become a famous star," Rachel mused, her fingers playing idly with the collar of his notch-neck sweater. "Where would I be, do you think?"
He didn't offer a scenario, and so she answered her own question aloud. "For starters, Nicki would still be alive," she said, her voice fond instead of grim. "Maybe we'd live out in the country somewhere with Fletcher. Have a lot of land. A garden out back."
Frank looked misty-eyed at her idyllic description. She continued softly, "Or maybe I'd have gotten married to a nice man. Wouldn't live anywhere extravagant. Maybe somewhere like this. Away from the city. Away from the rest of the world." Her eyes raised to meet his. "Maybe I'd have had a couple more babies with him. And Fletcher would have siblings."
His face was like she'd never seen it before. His eyes were glistening, but there were no signs of tears. He wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning either. He was just him, attentive and solemn, more handsome in the dim room than she could stand, breathing intently as he listened to her describe a life she never got to live.
"That's the most dangerous question we can ask ourselves in life," he spoke at last. She crinkled her brow in confusion, and he replied, "What if?"
"You ever ask yourself that question, Farmer?" she probed, gently tracing the fine hair at his temple.
He nodded slowly. "What if . . . he'd hit you instead of me."
It wasn't what she was expecting him to say. She found herself taken aback, overwhelmed by curiosity.
"What would you have done, do you think?"
"I don't know." He closed his eyes and breathed shakily. "It would've torn me apart."
His words seemed straightforward enough, but in Rachel's mind they were cryptic.
A long while went by where neither of them spoke, lying in each other's arms. For once Rachel let it lie instead of trying to convince him to talk more. She had gathered more than enough from his reaction.
Rachel had just begun to drift off to sleep when Frank's voice woke her with the softest words. "When I first saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen."
She felt a tear in the corner of her eye as she finally looked at him. He was staring into her again. He had her fully convinced there was no world existing beyond his eyes. And then, "When you looked at me it was like a knife in my gut."
Rachel was never more in danger of telling Frank that she loved him. She couldn't envision a scenario in which he said the words out loud to her. Perhaps his actions had spoken more loudly than any words could, she thought. Perhaps she should start reading between the lines and stop pressuring him to speak before he was ready.
Because when he did speak . . . Lord, it was worth the wait.
She whispered his name, at a loss for words herself.
Her heart swelled with desire as he pulled her against him and kissed her. The kiss went on for so long she lost track of the time. Rachel usually regarded kissing as a waste of time, but with Frank it was a delicate and precious form of communication. She had never experienced that connection with any other man.
"I'm not so cold anymore," she murmured against his throat. Her fingers made their way beneath his sweater only to find his cotton undershirt tucked tightly into his khakis. She tugged suggestively at the fabric until he couldn't ignore her any longer. He groaned in surrender and began to undress himself. Rachel mirrored his actions, growing more frustrated with each layer she had to toss aside. Before she could attack him, he guided her to instead lie with her head facing the foot of the bed, so they could be closer to the fire. He placed two pillows at the foot of the bed so that she would have a place to lie back, and once she was settled, their naked bodies came together in a feverish collision beneath the blankets.
Again, they kissed intensely, like lovers soon to be parted forever. Maybe they would be. Rachel allowed only a moment for the dark thought to sit in her head. Frank's warm fingers brushed it safely away as he stroked her hair, his tongue tasting her from every angle until her jaw throbbed from his attention.
The wind howled outside, and the tree branches battered the cabin's walls. The orchestra of foreign sounds grew louder as the night deepened, like a pack of hungry wolves prowling just outside. The sounds would have been frightening to her, if she wasn't in the arms of her heroic lover.
Making love to him was like writing a song. Her heart was so filled to the brim with inspiration and emotion, she could barely contain herself. They didn't even have to do anything except lie in each other's arms, skin to skin, breathing in sync. It was a mystery to Rachel, who had become so jaded to the idea of love over the course of her life. Was this what it was supposed to feel like? Like every bone in her body was electrified just from one touch. Like her heart was beating so hard and fast that it could break the sound barrier. Like a butterfly was born every second in the pit of her stomach. He just kept taking her higher and higher, with barely any effort. It was purely his closeness that was responsible for lifting her to those impossible heights.
When they'd first been together this way, Rachel had a much different idea of what Frank should be as her lover. She had fantasized about him talking dirty to her, rebuking her for not following his rules, calling her a bad girl, promising to punish her. In those fantasies, he kept his weapons on the bed while they fucked and he talked a whole hell of a lot more than he did in real life.
But that was not who he was at all. And as exciting as she might have thought that would be, it didn't hold a candle to the man he really was in bed.
He was so painstakingly intentional with everything he did. No matter how aroused he was, he maintained a level of unmatched composure while tending to her every need. He managed to uncover needs she was unaware that she even had. The only weapon he carried was his piercing gaze. He didn't promise to punish her, he promised to pleasure her. He didn't call her degrading things, he called her by her name.
This man had put up with a lot to be around her, and Rachel knew it too well. But yet here he was, a slave to her every desire, panting as if he'd run a marathon to be there with her, kissing every inch of her body.
For many days now, Rachel had been longing for 1992. But this was not 1992. This was so much more.
Back then she hadn't known him as deeply as she did now. She didn't know about his life outside of being a revered bodyguard. She hadn't seen him shoot a gun, or toss knives with a flick of his wrist, or teach her son self-defense. When she had slept with him that night in 1992, he hadn't yet jumped in front of a bullet to save her life.
It changed their dynamic so much. She had slept with him back then mostly because she was physically attracted to him; in a way he could have been seen as a conquest. She was confused by him, and she wanted to put an end to her confusion. When she saw something as a mystery, the only thing she could think to do was strip it down to its barest form and explore it fully. But stripping Frank down to nothing had not given her any answers. It had only made her long for more.
Her thoughts were clouded as she felt his fingers moving between her thighs. He touched her incessantly until she was seconds from an inevitable climax, and then he grabbed both her hands and pinned her back down to the bed. He was doing it again.
Her entire body burned with need, but he slowed his pace and languidly kissed her neck instead. Sometimes when her eyes were closed, she had a hard time believing it was him. She wondered idly what it would look like from an anonymous onlooker, to watch Frank Farmer making love to a woman. In any other relationship she would have suggested making a sex tape, but being with him had made such an idea taboo.
He touched her as if he would be tested at dawn to sculpt her body from memory. It was the kneading, grasping motions of his hands; the lingering of his touch on parts of her body that were not even sexual - shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles. At certain times she felt like he was testing her reflexes. It was somehow both amusing and arousing.
He was so strange. So wonderfully strange.
She tried to do the same to him, but he did not willingly surrender his control. Somehow she had remained under his command, and before she knew it, his fingers had slipped inside of her.
She didn't understand how a man with presumably very few lovers in his life, could be so aware of where and how she should be touched. She thought it might have something to do with the general skill of his fingers in all other scenarios, but even that didn't make much sense. She raised her hips against his hand repeatedly as he curled his fingers within her, beckoning every ounce of her sanity with each calculated motion. She grasped his shoulders and pulled him against her, desperate for the hot fast friction that only his body could provide, but he again denied her.
She cried out in protest this time, but he was unaffected. Again he reclaimed dominance above her, his legs lodged between hers and his hands tucking her arms beneath her back. His expression confused her even more; he looked as if he were the one being tortured, and not her. She could feel his fingers trembling as he held her in place, and his breathing was so hard she actually felt concerned by it.
She wanted to say something, but unlike her behavior with other lovers, Rachel found Frank's silence to be infectious, and she was at a perpetual loss for words in his bed. He said so much more with his touch than words could ever say. At long last he nestled against her, in a pattern she'd grown to recognize, slowing his pace to a tender rest. As much as she needed release, she had learned to be patient, learned to savor the moments of closeness after he repeatedly denied her. Her face was flushed at the thought that he found enjoyment in this; she was so curious why he had ascribed to this strange practice of lovemaking in the first place.
In a rare moment of compromise, Rachel found hasty access to his earlobe, and the quick work of her tongue had nearly undone him. He grunted in much the same way as he had while tossing those knives, and caved against her, practically gnawing her shoulder with his mouth.
If he didn't give her what she wanted soon, she was going to come just from watching him.
She pleaded with him, nearly incoherent, but he knew what she wanted.
His face was exquisite, dimly lit by the flattering glow from the fire as he laid to her side and fondled her breast with his hand. She threw her head back in agony as he brushed his thumb incessantly across her nipple, causing goosebumps to appear all over her smooth skin. She wondered when it would be her turn to torture him - he didn't seem ready to forfeit, and she wasn't about to complain. Her thoughts became disjointed again as he gathered her weakened body up in his arms, wrapped her leg around his waist, draped her over his thigh and cradled her head with the crook of his left arm. With his free arm, he reached down and touched her exactly where she needed to be touched.
His fingers played along her flesh with excruciating precision. She couldn't comprehend how it was possible for him to touch her so many ways at once, with just one hand. She tried to look down to see how he had done it, but her view was blocked by the rest of his arm as he pinned her in place against him. She writhed in anguish with every flutter of his skilled fingers, barely able to contain herself. Each gust of wind outside was bested by her cries of pleasure, and just when she could take no more, he tore his hand away and let her fall back onto the pillow.
She knew from the look in his eyes, he was still going to make her wait. She almost fought him on it, but something inside of her told her to trust him.
Looking back now, it was silly to think that the absence of a condom had stopped them back at the hotel. Their circumstances hadn't changed since then, but the topic of adequate contraception hadn't come up once tonight. She found that very curious. Last time, she'd been in such a frenzy. Last time it happened so fast, she hadn't even had the time to really feel him.
She'd forgotten how it felt.
His body hovered above hers, pale skin painted by rust-colored flames as he thrust into her, slowly, tenderly, eyes never parting from hers. It was a haunting sight, one she was certain she would never forget.
The sensations were overwhelming. Hot, solid, slick, smooth. She had no idea which of them was responsible for the wetness; likely they were both equally to blame.
She was so confused.
He did not rock mindlessly against her in the way she'd grown to expect from men. His hips moved with such indecent intention; at first with slow, purposeful pressure, and then a crescendo of fast, shallow thrusts, where she could feel every tight twitch of muscle in his abdomen as he worked against her. He would pull out, just barely within her grasp, then plunge back inside of her with a criminally tender pace, letting her feel the force of every added inch, until she trembled for another. The incendiary silk of his every languid motion sent her into fits of agonizing bliss.
She knew what he was doing. He wanted to see her come first. Her hands grasped his shoulders, hanging on tightly as her legs wrapped around his waist. His lips parted, releasing puffs of steam with every rhythmic breath. Rachel suddenly noticed her own breath visible upon the air, just as he'd predicted earlier in the night. He reached behind him to bring the blankets over their bodies, and she shivered and held him tighter. Buried beneath his warmth, Rachel watched with weakened eyes as Frank struggled to suspend his climax. She was inches from her own, and it became an unspoken battle of who could hold out the longest.
If she'd looked away from him, she may have had a chance. Everything she saw was touched by a scarlet glow from the dying embers. His handsome face, flushed from the fire. The subtle veins protruding along his neck. The sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. Her eyes followed the twitching trail of muscles down his arm, coming to rest on the scar where Portman's bullet had lodged itself. Shaking uncontrollably, Rachel glanced at her own arm, smooth and unmarred. Finally, she met his eyes – and through the reflections of the fire behind her, she saw his truth. He would do it all again.
She lost the battle, spiraling over the edge. He did not wait one second longer before surrendering himself, and for the first time in her life, Rachel climaxed at the same time as her lover. It was appropriate, she thought, that the single most intimate experience she would likely ever have would be shared with Frank Farmer.
He was not very vocal when he came; it was all in his breathing. A rapid staccato of short, clipped inhales, followed by several long, deep exhales. But thank God they were acres away from civilization, because Rachel was vocal enough for them both.
If someone had heard her, they may have thought she was being tortured. He watched her in wonder, perhaps baffled that he could've been responsible for such a display. He pinned her down with his hands on her wrists, insistent that she thrash about beneath him while still under his command.
It seemed ages before she had recuperated. At long last he laid down beside her, arms wrapped loosely around her shuddering body, and within minutes he'd fallen asleep.
Rachel shifted closer to his body, startled by the uncomfortable wetness weeping from between her thighs. This was the other part of unprotected sex that she'd forgotten. How messy it was.
Not wanting to leave the warmth of the bed, she resolved to ignore it and snuggled closer to her lover, undisturbed by the howling storm outside. She stared at his peaceful face in quiet disbelief, admiring every shadow and angle until she drifted into sleep.